Four Pitfalls of High Tech Paid Search Marketing

Are you struggling to get the right value out of your paid search marketing efforts?

When you think of paid media, you generally think of driving an immediate transaction from a user and then being done with them. But what if you are a High Technology company with a long sales cycle? Or what if your ads don’t normally reach the decision maker but reach their influencer instead? Don’t give up on utilizing paid media for your company – learn how to make the most out of every site visit that you pay for!

Here are Four common mistakes that High tech companies often make when starting their PPC efforts.

1. Assuming Gated Content is Right for the Searcher

So, you have created a great piece of content about your latest high tech offering and you want to leverage it to drive leads. Should you land every search there?

Paid Search clicks are very often users that have no experience with your brand. This means they may not be ready to give you their information during their first interaction, even if you are offering a great quality piece of content. Because they have no knowledge of your brand, they may assume they would able to get the same information from another source online.

It can be difficult to build confidence with a single page of content where the only apparent next step is giving up their information. Think about it this way, if you wanted information on a topic, but were driven to a landing page without information, but instead a form to be contacted by a sales person, would that build your trust in a company?

2. Keywords with Low Conversion Rates are “Bad Keywords”

Frustrated by a highly relevant keyword that is just not living up to your conversion expectations? A keyword is only as good as its ad copy and landing page experience.

Does your ad copy accurately reflect your keyword and your brand? When they click on the ad are they landed on a page that is appropriate to the search that they performed?

Segmenting our searches and our content to match what the Query dictates is paramount to the long term success of a Paid Search Campaign. Not only will it provide the user with a better experience, in the long run, it will drive down the cost of your incremental search traffic by increasing the Ad Rank of your ads.

Before eliminating a Keyword from your campaign, consider the experience the user has when they click on your ad, it is likely they are just not getting what they need from you.

3. Building Paid Search Landing Pages without Website Navigation

Landing pages are in integral part of Paid search. They are often the first thing someone will see with your companies brand and logo on it, so you want it to be a great experience. If someone gets there and can’t get what they need, would that be a good experience? Google doesn’t think so, so you shouldn’t assume that right off the bat either.

While it can be tempting not to give someone the option to explore your site without taking the desired next step and offer you their information, you need to be careful. You also want to make sure you are not hurting the possibility of a future conversion from that person. Having a holistic Digital Marketing Strategy will allow you to capitalize on traffic that does not immediately convert.

4.Thinking That Paid Search is a Temporary Part of Digital Marketing

Are you hoping that one day your Search Engine Optimization efforts will one day preclude the need for paying for clicks? Searcher behavior will always dictate the necessity for Paid Search and Search Engine Optimization to capture all of the quality traffic. Also, the compounding effect of having your brand dominate the top of the first page of results should be enough to convince you that it is imperative to do both.

While Paid Search is capable of a greater immediate effect than Organic Search, the longevity of quality paid campaigns is a large factor in how the search engines view of you as an advertiser. Their knowledge of your company as a Paid Search advertiser has a direct impact on your Ad Rank and thus the costs of acquiring a new user visit to your site.

If your paid search is done correctly for a long period of time you will be able to maintain a great level of fantastic traffic at a significant discount compared to your competition.

When we have to rely on building relationships with prospects in order to turn them into clients we must translate this into everything we are doing with digital marketing. Our overall strategy must shift from being all about immediate gratification, to nurturing our paid search visitors down the sales funnel the same way we would with the rest of our digital marketing.

James joined Wakefly in 2015 as a Digital Marketing Strategist. Working in Digital Marketing since 2011, he has collaborated with numerous clients across many industries on web, mobile, and other digital marketing platforms. His passion for marketing has also led him to take an active role in developing integrated digital marketing strategies to meet client goals. He is a graduate of Arizona State University, with a B.S. in Management.